Conventional Wisdom: Don’t Get Hurt!

It is conventional wisdom. Don’t do things that can get you hurt. After all, who wants to get hurt? Who wants their life changed because of something that happened at work? I think we can all agree that getting hurt at work really sucks for all involved.

Therefore, it is conventional wisdom that we should act safely on the job to avoid this fate. We try to emphasize this conventional wisdom in our safety programming. We share incident reports from injuries in other parts of the plant, from other sites, from other companies and even other industries. We also share close calls (near misses) and minor injuries. It is a popular corporate practice to bring in speakers to give workers the opportunity to hear the harrowing story of life-changing injuries detailed moment by moment autobiographically by the disfigured person on stage.

Think of your drivers’ education course. Other than learning the signs and right-of way in the classroom what else did you experience? Yup, videos and pictures of horrific crashes, aggrieved loved ones and other consequences of dangerous or distracted driving. It is conventional wisdom to think if we could just make these negative consequences more salient, then folks will act more safely. Scare em’ straight.

Then we see workers put themselves at-risk. You see a construction contractor jump over footers lined with rebar seemingly attempting to impale himself. You see a maintenance worker atop of equipment without fall protection like someone in a circus. You learn about a work crew overriding controls on a high pressure hose because it was malfunctioning. Who needs an arm anyway. What is the matter with these folks? Are they not ‘wise’? Didn’t we share our wisdom with them?

Safety vs. Habituation

The threat of getting hurt should be enough to guide us to avoid risk. The problem is that most of us don’t experience a serious injury at work. Actually, this isn’t a ‘problem’, it is actually a fortunate to avoid injury. But here is the issue that defies conventional wisdom: How do you learn to avoid something that you’ve never experienced? We call this the “Avoidance Paradox” in behavioral science.

Some avoidance behaviors are innate. Does an African impala have to experience getting mauled by a lion before it learns how to avoid lions? Silly question I know because if we have to wait to get mauled then we won’t be around to avoid anything in the future. Instead, impalas are born with a multitude of defenses and instincts to go into flight mode.

Do us humans have to learn to avoid precarious heights by first jumping off high cliffs and crushing our body? No, our perception and avoidance of height develops very early in our lives. The avoidance falling is innate.

Certainly on the shop floor, at the chemical plant, the mine face or the construction site there are scary conditions that should kick our innate reflexes into gear getting us to avoid coming into contact with these hazards. Indeed, when we are brand new to a job at a hazardous workplace, we experience some ‘flight or fight’ fear response. This is our body telling us to avoid the hazards. However, over time, our bodies go through a process of habituation. Repeated encounters with a fearful situation where nothing bad happens lessens the fearful responding. Over time, habituation may become so complete that the worker no longer experiences any fear response at all to the hazards!

To make matters worse, many of the hazards that can cause serious injuries don’t stare us right in the face. Chemicals remain behind pipes, pressure behind barriers, fire in furnaces, and falling objects can only be seen with eyes on top of your head (which would otherwise be covered up with your hard hat).

Many of you have seen the famous photograph taken in 1932 of Manhattan ironworkers who are enjoying their lunch sitting with no fall protection on an I-beam eight hundred feet in the air above New York City.

No boss would allow this with today’s safety standards, but make no mistake, modern construction workers still habituate to similar hazards in some form. Indeed, some level of habituation might be necessary for our workers to do their jobs in these crazy environments, otherwise no work can get done. Yup, your business relies on habituation to get the work done.

Conventional Wisdom loses to habituation. We cannot rely on the body’s fear response or even threats of injury to motivate safe behaviors.

So we scratch our head after seeing or learning about risky behaviors on the job site. Searching for reasons we usually resort to fictional explanations like ‘complacency’, ‘indifference’ or call our workers ‘F&#%’N STUPID’. When we label, blame or judge… these are dysfunctional practices that kill your safety culture.

Instead of accusing the worker of less-than conventional wisdom, we need to understand what is reinforcing their at-risk behaviors. Reinforcement is on the side of risk. A simple fact that betrays conventional wisdom: Safety is not naturally reinforcing.